Is this normal? Living in truck, no parking, no truck stops.

1) During my first two weeks there, I was not aware of the other shower stalls in the driver lounge, only the one outside with holes large enough for rats to go through. There is a vermin problem there.

2) The chemical 'plant' is the quala itself, where they have stacks of hundreds of placarded totes which are in heavy use 24 hours a day, about 10 feet away from the outside shower stall, to say nothing of all the other hazmat they rinse out of the trailers.

3) Schneider calls their tanker division 'bulk', it's on their uniforms, paperwork, etc. Not sure if you knew that, or if you know Schneider or any of the other majors well enough to know something that basic. So maybe I should call BS on you?

Anyway, seems these past few weeks the quala has resembled more of a severely impacted operation, instead of a place where disease is rampant due to there being far too many drivers using it, and where it's not possible to even drive through the lot, let alone park anything in it. Still think this situation is not normal though. Don't most truck drivers dread spending their 34 in a truck stop? What about months in a tank wash?

 

They turn away van drivers and refer them to their own lot, and don't allow bulk trailers in their lot. They also have no showers. I can use it as a parking spot for a bobtail but not much else.

The company has zero physical infrastructure in LA for their bulk division, and they don't even have a bulk intermodal division nor do they train drivers on the intermodal equipment, even though I have hauled nothing but bulk intermodal with this company. Almost every load has had complications stemming from the differences between non-intermodal and intermodal equipment. Half of their support team are not prepared to handle calls about bulk intermodal trailers. If I'm hauling hazmat, the railyard rejects me because I don't have a step ladder to put in the placards in the right place. These past two weeks, nearly every piece of equipment out of the railyard has had a critical DOT failure (above 90% fail rate), either snapped gladhands, crushed chassis, missing lights, even a missing landing gear handle. Theft is rampant, but Schneider does not have a lot to compensate, instead they actually closed the only place that could support bulk in Fontana.

During my last week I resorted to insisting that I know loads at least 24 hours in advance so that I could go to the railyard and pre-trip them a day early to get them to fix it. Had I not done this, I would have been late to all of my drops waiting for railyard mechanics to fix problems. This also does not seem normal to me. This only happens in LA.

 

I don't even want to work in LA. They sent me here without asking. I'm supposed to work in a different area, yet for some reason the vast majority of my time with this company has been in LA. I'm seriously considering moving on to another firm, even with just 3 months driving experience.